


les étoiles (me massent le dos)

by jeannedarc



Category: EXO (Band), NCT (Band), SuperM (Korea Band)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M, Prison, Rescue Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:13:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21772759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/pseuds/jeannedarc
Summary: Lucas knows what the right thing to do is the very moment he finds out he'll be working with The Prisoner.
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, side taeten - Relationship
Comments: 14
Kudos: 124





	les étoiles (me massent le dos)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirtstain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtstain/gifts).



> hellooooooo ♥  
> bout that time eh chaps!  
> thanks to maddie for commissioning me for this! it was a blast!  
> thanks also to elle and claude for holding my hands while i gently agonised over getting it Right!

According to his commanding officer, everything is his fault. And to be fair, he'll absolutely take that blame, if he has to; someone does, and he can't stand the thought of someone else being in trouble over his mistake or, worse yet, their own. Judging by the look on her face, someone has fucked up _massively_ , and he can’t say he likes the idea of being the one in the line of fire when he’s basically too new to have done much of anything, here. 

He's standing in her office, back pressed to the wall, breathing in the synthetic starch of his uniform, the digitally-produced ink that signs all her important documents for her. His hair, gelled before his transit flight to The Colony -- the name of the prison at which he’s recently been hired on -- has fallen flat, and he knows he probably looks more like a seagull than a pop star. A shame. He likes the idea of looking like a pop star.

She glances up at him from behind her glasses, and she’s _so_ tiny, and _so_ intimidating, that he has to swallow just to keep his tongue where tongues are meant to be.

“Today,” she tells him, speaking slowly because apparently she thinks he doesn’t understand words, “you have a new assignment.”

Lucas Wong, bottom of the ladder, tall man on the low end of his personal employment spectrum, has three desires. One is to make his mother proud, but his mother's cooing has ensured that he has never once fallen short of that, though he has fallen short of his own expectations. Two is that he manages to save up enough to buy himself the junkiest craft on the planet so that he can get on with his life's true calling: mapping out the stars that no one has once mapped out before.

Three is that he does not, under any circumstances, want to interact with The Prisoner (real name unknown), who was taken in just a few nights ago, at the tail end of his first shift.

This is, as it turns out, a futile third wish. The warden, a tiny doll with eyes like secret gemstones but with far more contempt hidden in their depths, sounds out just right with her precious little mannequin mouth: “You’ll be in segregation, under Lee.”

Again, Lucas swallows, unsure as to why his mouth is both dry with anticipation and full of an entire river’s worth of saliva.

"You know the rules," says his CO, gruffly, barely looking up from her clipboard, flipping through documents as if Lucas does not even register to her. "Don't interact with the bots. Don't talk with the prisoner unless he wants to talk. Don't bring anything valuable into the cells unless you want someone to snatch it off your body; I don’t feel like doing any seg shakedowns. And for the love of God, Wong, don't try and make friends with anyone."

Lucas, for the record, chooses to ignore that last bit. As it is, he’s too busy quaking at the thought of being forced to interact with the most dangerous criminals on this particular prison colony. He wouldn't know if this is the prison with the highest security, but he does know that the rattles he's heard passing by the seg ward, the screaming that comes in streams and spouts and angry bursts, have kept him up awhile after his last shifts.

This is fine, he tells himself, lifting his chin and saluting the warden before dipping out into the hallway so that he might catch his breath. He presses his hand to his chest, tugging gently at one of the gold buttons on his uniform, and rests his crown against the wall behind him.

It is, he decides, fortunate that someone there actually likes him. Statistically, everyone should like him, but at the moment it's just his fellow grunt. "Hey," greets Mark, this tiny baby bird of a guy who's got no business being as cute as he is when Lucas has seen him quite literally drag an alien prisoner out by the ear. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, just," and Lucas forces a smile, a little too polite for their usual banter, "gotta go start in seg today."

Mark's eyes light up. "Oh, you're gonna have a great time." And it doesn't hint at the cruelty of which Mark is capable -- he isn't, unless it's to do with work -- so much as the fact that they both know Lucas is being hazed. Which is unprofessional, but it isn't like either of them can do anything about it.

"Why do you say that," asks Lucas suspiciously, but Mark's already walking away; it's in the same direction Mark needs to go, so he hurries to keep up. "Mark. Why do you say that."

"Because it's true. Seg gets super crazy, more often than not. I sort of miss it, sometimes."

Huh. Lucas wouldn't have pegged his only friend in this rotten hellhole as an adrenaline junkie, but there it is. "What do I have to look out for?"

"Oh, not much. It's mostly empty. There's only a few. You know, murderers, traffickers, violent people. That sort of thing. Oh, and..." Mark pauses here, ominously, though Lucas can't tell if it's because of him trying to psych Lucas out so much as he's struggling to pull his security clearance on its stretch lanyard so they can get into their deployment pod. "There's that one guy. The alien one. He's being held until some scientist can come pick him up. He broke in...where was it?" Mark finally triumphs over his badge and taps it to the reader. "I don't know. Somewhere. It was all over the news, didn't you see?"

Lucas doesn't want to admit that he's long since run out of data for the local cycle, and that he hasn't been able to afford a better plan, and that he hasn't been paid yet. So he just sort of shrugs. "I don't watch a lot of news if I can help it."

The door finally opens, the latch a slow thing to come undone. "Yeah, there were a few of them. All put in separate prisons. We just happened to get one. He doesn't talk, I don't think. Mostly just sleeps." Mark grins, something wicked gleaming behind his dancing, dark eyes. "You'll have fun! Seriously." And he claps Lucas on the back. "It's not nearly as bad as you think it is. Just...maybe try plugging your ears."

The dispatch room is just a row of cells, different single-man pods that whir and click when someone comes close enough to engage them. Mark presses his fingertip into the control panel of one; Lucas does the same to the one right next to him. He doesn't tell Mark that he isn't convinced of the fun of it all, but then, it's probably a given at this point. "Thanks," he says after a long silence, the machines before them humming to life as they both make to climb inside. "For talking to me, I mean."

"Is Jung giving you shit again?" Mark asks, grinning as he fits both his legs into the pod. "Don't worry about her. She's like that with everyone who hasn't been here very long. Before you know it you'll be just a regular member of the crew like the rest of us." And he sinks into his craft. The door hisses closed over him.

Lucas finds it comforting, the enclosed space. What isn't comforting is how he has to clench every muscle in his body when he squishes himself into the tiny deployment pod. His knees up to his chin, he rests his forehead on them as the door thwacks quietly against the line of his shoulders. A couple rattles, and then he's shot down the tube system.

This isn't his first time in the main, dealing head-on with the esteemed guests and colleagues who’ve earned themselves a long-term stay in The Colony. Both his shifts, twenty-four earth hour cycles, had been there, and he'd mainly just been following someone around. The first, he'd been grateful to meet his one and only friend here; the second he'd been largely ignored. This is his first time on his own. It's like hazing, he thinks, and marvels at the miracle of it.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, the idea of getting the hell out of this system tingles, and he remembers his goal, and puts on his most serious face.

It probably isn't that serious, he realises with a sigh.

The whole thing starts out easy enough: mopping floors, wiping windows, occasionally forcing himself to sing under his breath so the sounds of taunts don't distract him from what he's doing or, worse yet, unnerve him. Every once in awhile he'll gaze out the window, a high thing that he can barely peer into, and wonder what the next system holds for him, when he finally reaches it. That, of course, gets him in trouble. Distraction doesn't do when one's surrounded by dangerous people. He's interrupted in his thoughts by the banging of fists to doors, or low, drawn moans that let him know just what it is his trustees are up to.

Eventually, though, it comes time to feed. It's a simple operation, mainly: shoving trays into slots in doors. The prisoner comes and grabs their grub. They're not kind about it, and if they don't like dinner, Lucas quickly learns, they throw it against the wall. Must be nice to be able to trash perfectly good food like that, thinks Lucas, sighing, dejected.

When it's time to feed The Prisoner, though, the guard over this cluster of cells calls him up to his picket, hands him a key. Old-fashioned. Earthly. Like something out of the books Lucas' ex was always reading about the planet none of them had ever seen.

"What's this for?" Lucas tries to keep the tremour from his voice. It's a valiant effort with a pathetic reward.

"You're going to have to go in there and feed him yourself," states the guard, sniffling. "He's still cuffed to the bed, under the orders of his guardian, who should be here sometime within the next few weeks."

That, to Lucas, seems a bit cruel, but he doesn't say anything, merely nods as he tucks the key into the belt keeping his uniform in place. He ducks out of the picket, the door whooshing closed behind him.

With shaking hands, he carries the tray to the cell. It's the only silent one in the entire wing, he notes; having become accustomed to the gentle trickle of noise streaming into his ears, the sudden quiet unsettles him. He uses the key to open the lock, and the door swings open on its own. "Hello?" he asks. "I brought you food...they say you haven't eaten in a little while..."

There is no response save the visual stretched out before him. The alien looks astonishingly human, cuffed to a metal stretcher, only cushioned by a paper-thin mattress. His papers had read a name, and Lucas had looked them over the way he'd been meant to, but in his focus he's forgotten. It doesn't matter. The Prisoner only looks at him with slow, sleepy eyes, blinking a couple times before turning his head back to the ceiling, listless. His mouth hangs open, just a bit, just enough that Lucas can focus on the shape of his lips.

It would be stupid to think he's good-looking, this supposed maneater, this killer wanted across the galaxy. But then, Lucas doesn't know that he's known for being smart, and can't help himself, impulse control out the window as soon as he realises he's got to safely put food into that elegant mouth. It's stupid. He's stupid. He knows it.

"I'm sorry," and Lucas means it, he's always saying sorry but it's never anything this sincere, "but I'm going to have to feed you. They said you aren't allowed to be uncuffed until your ward comes for you. Is...is that, um, alright?"

Still, nothing. The Prisoner merely bites his lip, draws in a ragged breath through his nose. It is here that Lucas studies him, the way his profile seems to fight the light rather than catch in it. There is, after all, something preternatural about him; it stands to reason that he wouldn't look quite human if someone were to inspect him closely.

The wall behind them opens; Lucas yelps out, caught off-guard, but it's only a chair offered him by the seemingly sentient space station system. He takes his seat, regretting not dropping the tray and running.

At this angle, though, he can see that The Prisoner is half-asleep, and Lucas, being himself, reaches over to tap his shoulder. "Hello?" he asks again, quieter this time, all too aware of the reverberation of his voice, deep and gravelled from lack of use, against the chrome walls of the cell.

The Prisoner finally gives him attention, wide-eyed focus that makes Lucas swallow dryly. His tongue is sandpaper, etching smooth against the ridged roof of his mouth. "Hi there. Did you hear me before? I have to feed you. You haven't eaten in days."

For what it's worth, the man looks as if he wants to speak, but instead bites down hard on his bottom lip. "I know. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want." Lucas doesn't know, couldn't possibly imagine what this man is feeling, but says it anyway, knowing that it makes him feel better when people tell him they understand, even when both know it's a lie. "I just need to make sure you try to eat, if you can. If you feel like it." The only comparable experience he has, for the record, is a night spent in a planetside cell, a drunken bar fight a little over a year ago. Still, his sympathy pours out in spades.

The food on the tray looks disgusting. Lucas has to wonder why they hadn't sprung for those new nutritional pills, if they were so worried about The Prisoner -- and, in fact, all his charges -- getting what they needed so they were competent to stand trial, whenever that time came. But no, it's a sloppy sandwich with some foreign meat the likes of which Lucas has never seen, nor smelled. He wrinkles his nose as he starts breaking it into bits, the bread crumbling beneath his careless fingertips. "I hope you don't have any allergies," jokes Lucas, not that it breaks the tension in the air.

The Prisoner simply stares at him. But when Lucas offers him his first bite, the man, so elegant and so out of place and so miserable in the way his eyes scan Lucas' face, opens his mouth to take it. It's an awkward angle, and Lucas ends up reaching into what little space lingers between them, tips the man's chin up, careful he won't choke.

They sit in mostly quiet, save the telltale noises of eating. This cell is soundproof, Lucas notes while The Prisoner chews it over. "You don't seem like you want to talk." Still, dead air. "That's fine. I usually talk more than most people, anyway." He glances away, free hand dropping into his lap where he can wring his fingertips around the hem of his pressed uniform shirt. "Apparently that's annoying. Would you say I was annoying?"

He scans The Prisoner's face for a long moment, looking for some affirmation, some denial. Perhaps The Prisoner simply doesn't speak the same language? Lucas, having forgotten everything he'd read, doesn't remember where they claim he's from, and doesn't know very much in terms of alien linguistics. "Sorry. I'll be quiet if you want me to."

And it's subtle, but Lucas feels the gentle press of a single fingertip along the outside of his wrist. He looks down, sees that The Prisoner is touching him, and takes warm comfort in that, eyes slipping closed.

He continues the feeding, The Prisoner taking his food in small bites, the inside of his mouth warm when it accidentally brushes against Lucas' fingerprints. Though he doesn't think himself good at very much, Lucas gets this man to eat everything on his plate, including that rancid looking gelatin dessert, which he spoons carefully into The Prisoner's mouth.

Though they do not share conversation the way Lucas may be accustomed to, He is, for the first time since starting this job, confident he'll do well here.

///

Lucas is, in his own humble estimation, bad at three things: Drinking like a human is supposed to drink, saying sorry when he actually needs to say it, and carrying on conversation by himself. The Prisoner -- Jongin, remembers Lucas, long after it's relevant, when he's gone home from his twenty-four earth hour cycle and is lying in his sad excuse for a bed -- has already helped him develop skill in that area, and he'd be smart to think himself getting better. But then, he'd pretty much told his whole life story: colony kid, never lived on a planet until he got old enough to move out from under his mother's roof, always been spoiled until recently, having had to get a job in order to make his own dreams come true.

He still doesn't know anything about Jongin that isn't printed on paper but, he assumes, that will come later. He's too charming not to draw _something_ out of that beautiful mouth. His mom says all he's got to do is wiggle his ears and smile. But then, his mom is probably biased, and he has no problem admitting that to anyone, least of all himself.

It's his second shift in seg, his fourth overall. Lucas doesn't find that he's near as nervous as he might have been just a couple days ago. Even Mark, who shows up to work at the same time as he does, same as before, sees fit to comment on it, clapping him dead between the shoulders in congratulations. Curse him for being too short to reach anything worth reaching. "You survived!" he all but hollers, earning the glare of a passing higher-up. "I'm so proud of you," he amends, this time in a stage whisper, shooting the bird to the uniformed fellow officer when they're essentially out of eyeshot.

"Dude, you're going to get written up," grumbles Lucas, arching the top of his spine to try and work out the tension Mark had put into his muscles by pretending to beat him up out of sheer happiness. "Don't do that. You're the only person here I like."

"Oh, for real?" And Mark grins, something cocky, but well-deserved, and Lucas must admit it looks good on him. "How was the, uh, the _big one_?" he asks, when they're turning the corner, headed toward their deployment pods.

"Fine," Lucas says, "but he almost bit my finger off the first time I had to shove food into his mouth." He isn't sure why he lies, but the look of sheer terror on Mark's face is worth it. "No, stop, I'm kidding. He didn't say anything. It was weird."

"Were you off yesterday?" Mark asks, and it's clear there's something more than simple curiosity to the question.

Lucas shrugs. "Yeah, caught up on sleep and my porn-watching, why?"

"Because I was checking the daily reports, and apparently he screamed the whole time."

That is, in the strictest sense, bewildering. Lucas, unsure of the fact's interpretation, lets it settle over him, a blanket without the home comfort aspect. Mark, too, doesn't contribute to that train of thought, instead talking about porn, having picked up on that conversational thread just a couple moments too late. For what it's worth, Lucas' databanks are full of downloads, uploads, shares, all sort of things, and he doesn't need recs from someone who clearly doesn't even want to fuck an alien with a tail.

He rolls his eyes, and tells Mark they'll catch up later, and excuses himself to be shot up into the seg wing.

His pod bounces all the way up the tube. He's a jittery mess of excitement, anxiety, something he can't quite place, and the combination is intoxicating, even though he knows full well it shouldn't be. After a long ride in silence he finds himself recalling his CO's words: Don't make friends. Don't talk too much.

Figuring that's out the window, he does the easy things first, the day-in-day-out, tries to savour the anticipation. But then, that's why his last boyfriend dumped him: because he wasn't good at waiting for things that were supposed to turn out fun for him.

In time, though, it's feeding hour, the first of three on his twenty-four hour cycle. He gives trays to everyone, saving Jongin for last. When finally he enters that cell, and finds his favourite prisoner with no time to think about the implication of that designation, he lights up like a space station on the news feeds.

"Hey," he greets, trying to keep it casual even though his voice pitches up a whole octave. He feels the part of a puppy, having waited for its owner for far too long before they came in the front door. Shouldn't it be the other way round? he wonders, as the wall opens, producing him his chair. When he takes a seat, already fiddling with food, he lets out a gasp, taking in Jongin's face for the first time. "Are you okay?"

Jongin's face is sporting a bruise that he didn't have two earth cycles ago, when Lucas last saw him. It curls around the shape of one beautiful, endless eye, greyed and greened and disgusting, in the suspcious curving shape of the metal bar on the gurney to which Jongin is chained.

He tries not to focus on the fact that it hadn't been noted in the daily updates, and what it might mean, that no one felt like recording the fact that someone had come down with such an ugly injury.

"Really...what is this?" Jongin doesn't look at him, and that's fine; he doesn't need eye contact to know that something terrible has happened. He wonders whether or not he should get in touch with the robot nurses that man the prisoners when someone isn't actively working the cells. But then, they must have been there recently; there's a fresh pinprick in the crease of Jongin's elbow, significant of having recently received a shot. The rings beneath his eyes are darker than they had been before. Perhaps he'd been asleep when Lucas had come in. He hates to interrupt things.

"I'm sorry," he says at last, and every ounce of sympathy in his enormous body is in those two little words. He knows, at the very least, that Jongin deserves an apology for this, however it came to be.

The strange whirring in the walls picks up, and Jongin seems to plead with those eyes of his fixed on Lucas' face, his plush bottom lip caught between his front teeth. He still isn't speaking. That, at least, is probably a good sign, though how Lucas manages to determine this, he isn't completely sure.

He starts feeding, tender fingertips at the hinge of Jongin's jaw, he watching all the while the gentle swell of his throat, the bob of it when he swallows, mindful of crumbs which he wipes away with a thumb. "So, my friend tried to talk to me about porn," he starts, and it's just like the last time, easy for Lucas to tell everything to someone who seems to only want to listen. "It's dumb. He probably only wants to fuck human girls."

Though there's no way for him to be sure, he thinks he sees the ghost of a goofy grin on Jongin's mouth between bites of bread and slimy mystery meat.

///

When he receives his first check, Lucas contacts a dealer he knows in the area, goes shopping for junky crafts. He can hear his mother's nagging in the back of his head, but this job was never meant to be permanent. Though the general consensus of the culture in which he was raised is that _fate is bullshit_ , he can't help but apply the idea of 'destiny' to his future, like a promise he isn't sure he can keep but wants to.

Upon getting home, receipt in hand, all he can think of is how he wants to tell Jongin about the tiny ship, its half-bedroom, its water closet of a control room. It's in the shop now, and he'll pay for the repairs when the next deposit hits his account, but for now he's so pleased with his accomplishments that he falls asleep with the slip of paper clutched to his chest.

He dreams of flying, and Jongin is there, curled up in his lap all small and precious while he sleeps in Lucas' arms. It's got this horny vibe to it, but then, everything Lucas does recently has a horny vibe to it, especially when he literally gets paid to put his fingers into Jongin's mouth on a pretty much daily basis. Though he'd lied about being bitten, he wouldn't mind finding out what it feels like.

He wakes up to a couple missed call requests. Flicking through his history, he finds one is from his mother, and the other is from his one friend left over from patrol academy. He rings back, intent on bragging about buying his first ship without academy money, but receives no answer. Cool, he thinks, sighing and heaving himself up out of bed.

His apartment is a broken one. None of the locks, old manual things made of metal from a planet Lucas has never seen, work properly, and the door barely even stays shut unless there's something propped in front of it. The night before, Lucas had come home, forgetting entirely his own living situation in favour of sinking into bed. It's obvious that someone's been in here. Lucky for him, there's nothing for them to find and subsequently steal. He closes the door, which is still hanging wide open -- he hears his worries about _ill-mannered_ B&E artists in his mother's voice -- and fixes himself some coffee like it's breakfast.

While the coffee replicates, Lucas checks his schedule a couple times. He'd paid his bills, made the payment on his ship, gotten new credits for data on the feeds in case he needs to watch the news. Or, at least, that's what he'd told himself, but then he spent a considerable amount of it downloading new porn, none of which Mark had recommended him.

He has work in a few hours. A shame he doesn't have the time to beat his meat into oblivion before going in. It'd probably make dealing with the Jongin thing a lot easier. It's more than just a sentimental dream; he likes Jongin in a way that makes no sense, because they've never had a real conversation.

Still, he thinks about that bruise that had marred Jongin's otherwise perfect skin, and some distant cousin to guilt tugs at his consciousness.

The coffee finishes. He takes a shower under the cold, barely-pressured drip of his showerhead. He collects his thoughts. Everything is fine. This is fine. It was just a dream, and Lucas has far bigger ones with which he must content.

///

Their third time together, Jongin's still healing. Lucas might worry, if he were the sort that worried unprompted. The bruise has faded a bit, and he must have some sort of innate healing ability. Funny: Lucas _knows_ , by all accounts, that Jongin is a part of some distant alien race, but he looks so human, and uses no powers, and it's easy for him to forget.

It does make the sex dreams a little less interesting, but that's neither here nor there.

Their third time together, Jongin's uncuffed from the bed, but Lucas lets himself into the cell anyway. Jongin is curled in the corner, something tiny and unfathomable, his face so young and innocent that Lucas, by comparison, feels wrinkled and crumbly, days-old bread of a human being. "Hey," he greets, and Jongin jolts in place. He's got his palms pressed to his sternum, and he's got this intense focus in his eyes. Lucas doesn't think he looked this serious when he was studying to take and eventually flunk his patrol academy exams. "What's going on? They let you out."

When it doesn't work, whatever it is that Jongin is doing, he looks up at Lucas with the biggest, saddest eyes, and there are tears streaming down his rounded cheeks, and there's such sympathy in Lucas that for a moment he doesn't know what he'll possibly do with the overflow.

"What's wrong?" he asks, and turns back a moment to place the tray of half-assed food on the bed in which Jongin had previously been trapped. With his hands emptied Lucas stoops in front of Jongin, knees to his nose, arms around his shins. They're both small, like this. Lucas is reminded of reading in books as a kid, how to make friends with dogs, you have to get on eye level with the dog so it doesn't perceive you as a threat. "What were you trying to do?"

Jongin just looks at him, begging for something for which he doesn't seem to have words. He trembles all over, and he just needs _help_ that Lucas doesn't know how or when or why to give.

Besides, as much as he likes Jongin, he's been working here for just a couple weeks now. The pay is good enough that he wouldn't risk it. The image of the craft he'd purchased himself flashes in the back of his mind. He sighs. "Listen, I know you... you don't want to talk about it, and that's fine. You don't have to, if you don't want to. But I need you to know, I'm here for you if you need me. Whatever you need me for."

Jongin's mouth twitches in a smile, but there's something off about it, something sad and inexplicable. "I know. I know! I'll leave eventually. But today I'm here, okay? And when I go it'll only be for a little while."

The key in his pocket burns, a little, when it brushes against his outer thigh through the thin material of his underneath. It's not a responsibility to be taken lightly. He probably should have given it back a little while ago, but now he can't seem to conceive of giving it back to the guard over the seg ward if he can help it.

He reaches into the gap between their bodies, and sifts fingers through Jongin's hair, acting entirely on instinct: this is how his mother might have comforted him, when he was younger, and cared to treat him like the baby he still is. "Is this okay?" he asks, but Jongin's already closed his eyes, leaned into Lucas' touch, humming under his breath.

It's not words, but it's sound, and the sound of his voice is something honeyed and delightful and beyond words.

Lucas and Jongin stay like this until Jongin feels like moving. He opens his eyes, dry now, and peers up at Lucas with a narrowed gaze. "Are you hungry?" asks Lucas, always accommodating, though he's not sure he needs to be. Jongin, in answer, shakes his head. "That's fine. Do you want to sit with me?" That earns him a nod. He gestures that Jongin might scoot over, make room enough for the both of them, and when he does Lucas sits in the space on the concrete floor just beside Jongin, close enough they might wrap arms around one another. They don't, but Lucas doesn't let this drag him down, all his dreams forgotten in favour of some good news.

"I bought myself a ship, yesterday," he tells Jongin, shifting that they might press their heads together, should Jongin choose to bridge the remaining space between them. "I'm going to stay here until your person comes to pick you up, but then I'm probably going to quit, because I'll have gotten enough to fix it and go places."

There's something that twinkles in the face just beside his own, but when Lucas looks up it's gone, a mirage, something Lucas should know better than to trust. "You've probably been to lots of cool places, haven't you? The papers all say that you were everywhere, before you got stuck in here." And Lucas, well, he doesn't have a lot of experience, thinks instead of the books he'd read in his childhood, atlases of stars he'd never seen or see. "Maybe, if you feel like it, you can tell me where to go, once I'm done here."

Jongin starts to cry again, but it's different this time, something softer, more subtle. He fits his arm into the space of Lucas' elbow, clutches at his arm like he can't bear the thought of their separation.

And for some reason he doesn't quite understand, Lucas feels a certain semblance of that sorrow, too.

///

The fourth, and fifth, and sixth shifts together hurt less. Jongin gets up, moves around, stretches his legs. Eventually, Lucas is charged with walking him up and down the wing a few times, lest the precious prisoner get muscle atrophy of some kind and be subpar in the eyes of his ward, yet to pick him up. Lucas relays all this information with a roll of his eyes, and Jongin must be coming back to being a person, because he almost laughs at the joke, shoulders shaking and a couple half-hearted squeaks spilling from his pretty, parted lips.

Long gone are the times in which Lucas may have guilted himself for being attracted to his charge. In fact, by the time they're moving about the ward, Lucas has moved onto flirtation, although he doesn't think himself very good at it. They round a corner, arm in arm with one another, Jongin's hands bound behind his back but Lucas' elbow hooked with his all the same. "So, do you come here often?"

As per usual, it's met with silence, but the look in Jongin's eyes is nothing short of judgment. "That's fine, I deserve that. Really, though, it's nice of me to walk you home, isn't it? Are you going to invite me in, when we get home?"

Perhaps home was not the best topic, because Jongin sort of slumps against him, albeit halfheartedly, Lucas having warned him about not getting too touchy before they’d made their venture out of the cell. The tiredness of it all, of the assumption, accidental as it may have been, fills the air between them. Though he doesn’t mean to, Lucas bumps Jongin’s shoulder with his own, keeps them moving, the stillness more likely to attract the attention of the bots that make the walls whir than any touching or conversation they could have.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. “About that.” He’s not good at it, not good at the specifics of an apology, but Jongin leans against him further all the same. "I don't, um... I don't know a lot about where you came from. You know that?"

Jongin, rings around his eyes, dips his head so that Lucas can't see him anymore, and Lucas hates to but understands the sentiment. "It's fine. I know you don't really want to talk to me, and you don't have to, but sometime you can, if you felt like it."

They make a couple more laps round the empty hallways in relative silence, their only interruptions the machines that keep the place running, the occasional banging on doors for attention. Lucas knows he should be attending to those sounds, doing his job, but the fact of the matter is that he can't, not when Jongin's in this state, not when his ward should be coming any day now. When their new routine is completed, they tuck away into his cell.

Jongin parks himself in the corner, hands to his chest, same as he always does after they've eaten and Lucas has talked a bit. This time there's more frustration, less despair in the knot between his eyebrows when he does it. Lucas takes a hesitating step toward him, his other responsibilities nagging at him in the most literal sense. "You okay...?" he asks, reaching out a hand.

Whatever outcome it is Jongin wants doesn't happen, and he fists his hands on his bent knees, shrinking in on himself with his head hung low. Lucas is reminded of stories in which the prisoner is readying himself for his execution, and it's near enough to break him down into something he isn't.

Jongin looks up after a long while of them frozen like this. His eyes meet Lucas', pitiful but defiant. He opens his mouth to speak, and Lucas almost wants to interrupt him, tell him he doesn't have to, but the single word that croaks out of the prisoner stops him in his tracks.

"Help."

Lucas' heart stutters in his chest, and he sinks into a squat, eye level with Jongin to erase any fear either of them might have. "Help?" he asks, for clarity, mouth wrapping slow around the word.

And Jongin just rests his head on his knees like he's never wanted to sleep more.

Round his eye, the bruise has mostly healed, a pale yellow that only catches in certain angles, under certain lights; it can't hurt that much, unless someone were to poke and prod at it. But that's precisely what Jongin does, heel of his palm to the injury, like he's trying to make it worse.

Moving in, Lucas wraps his fingers around Jongin's impossibly delicate wrist. He doesn't make it stop, doesn't try to pry Jongin away from himself, but just holds there, until Jongin's winched-shut eyes unscrew, until he looks into Lucas' face.

It's too late. The walls have detected something off about what's happening with Jongin, here in this room, and he shoves Lucas away with great misgiving, a cry of anguish that supersedes the machinery click-clacking to life, tethering Jongin to the wall. The straps are unbreakable, though he struggles, and something vibrant and hot fills the room.

The nurses come, and they seem to scrutinise Lucas from beneath their red visors as they carelessly knock him out of the way, onto his ass. He tries to protest, but it doesn't matter; these bots weren't programmed to listen, only do the small medical tasks that real doctors don't seem to have time for. He watches as Jongin thrashes between them, as the syringes come out from some hollow compartment in the bots' forearms, as they take them between perfectly constructed fingers and press the noses of their needles into Jongin's skin.

Shaking, Lucas gets to his feet. A bot flags him, doesn't let him pass through the open doorway, instead blocking it with a bright-red barrier. A robotic voice commands he not leave. He shudders still, leans against the door, watches as they lift Jongin, put him back onto his bed, cuff him, leave him there.

Though he can't quite find the words for it, he is haunted by the last look of Jongin he gets, forced to sleep by medication. This is not the Jongin he knows, who laughs so quietly at his jokes that Lucas has to watch and make sure it's landed, who needs help and doesn't know how to ask for it, who has been so, so brave up until this point.

A voice clicks into the room. "Come up to the picket," it demands, and Lucas knows he's fucking done for, that he's broken the very basic rules of working seg, tried to make friends, talked too much and, despite his best efforts, done the unspoken, made friends with The Prisoner.

In a huff of frustration and fear, adrenaline still coursing through him, Lucas marches to his fate with his head held high, filled with the conviction that only someone truly foolish could have.

///

He knows, when he gets home from his shift, that he's got to come up with a plan, that Jongin simply can't stay there, forced into the hands of whoever will pay the most for him or, worse yet, whoever has the most to gain from him. He thinks of who could possibly be waiting this long to pick up a supposedly important prisoner, and the only answers he comes up with on his own are the government and science.

Needless to say, both options give him a headache, but he scrolls his feed anyway, trying to find solutions for a problem he isn't entirely sure he has.

At first it's just basic information, Lucas squinting into academic journals on alien biology, trying to figure out where Jongin comes from, what he'll need to survive in an atmosphere that isn't perfectly regulated. It's in the middle of this that he gets paid, and all the credits that drop into his account are immediately funneled out toward bills and, to his delight, the payments on his

Next he looks into the news, which he vaguely remembers Mark mentioning to him. There is no information on Jongin in any of the articles -- nothing specific, anyhow, nothing that would teach him what it is he needs to do in order to get Jongin out.

Third he looks into finding blueprints for the colony at which he works, which is stupid, and classified information that can't be reached without his authorisation codes. He doesn't need any flags on his record. It's been two weeks, for fuck's sake.

Finally, he thinks to consult someone, a friend, reasonable and thoughtful and not at all the reckless fuck that Lucas finds himself to be in situations that seem, to him, desperate. That's fine. He knows himself well enough.

He's halfway through calling when he realises that this, too, is stupid. He's about to hang up when he realises that Taeyong has actually answered his request to video conference, and is blinking up at him from his lap. An awkward situation. He laughs, even though he doesn't really feel like laughing. "Hey," he greets, scrubbing at his forehead with a palm. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah," and Taeyong's connection must be bad, because his voice has changed, and he's got this blurriness around his edges. Or maybe that's just the drop of alien blood in him. Over the years Lucas hasn't gotten any better at making that particular distinction. "Ten's here, is that okay?" And he cranes the camera angle so that Lucas can see the very crown of a slick, black head of hair that doesn't look up at him, but offers a lackadaisical wave nonetheless. "I mean, I can ask him to go, if you want."

Lucas doesn't think Ten likes him very much, if he and Taeyong's last meeting is any indication. Mostly he'd bitched about having to pick Lucas up from some remote station he'd managed to get himself stranded on, and sulked and checked his feed the entire ride home. But he glances up and flashes a smile anyway, and Lucas does his best not to pretend that Taeyong had been sweet and thoughtful enough to elbow him into it. "What's going on?" Taeyong asks after a long pause. "Everything okay? You only look that serious when you're studying for exams, or when you have a really big problem..."

And it's stupid, because they haven't talked in awhile, since long before Lucas started working at the prison, but it's a comfort, the fact that Taeyong knows him so well. He explains, slowly at first, but the more he discusses the issue the heavier it gets on his heart, til it's a craft sucked into a storm, crashing on the waves of meteors. Taeyong, for the record, only listens, bottom lip caught between his teeth, and Lucas must wonder what he's done to deserve someone so good, so thoughtful in his life.

When it's all off his chest, Taeyong cracks a smile. "You haven't talked about anyone like you talk about him in a really long time."

Lucas wrinkles his nose, draws the blanket over his mostly-naked legs, aware of the subconscious meaning of it but ignoring it with a brazenness that would make most people who know him scoff. "I know."

"You haven't talked that much since you tried to date that one kid back in school," Taeyong goes on. Ten, at long last, perks up, glancing up into the screen and making a face. "He was cute," amends Taeyong, glancing down into Ten's face. "But you don’t really… I don’t know. It’s nice to see you happy about someone new.”

"Anyway," Lucas says, all scrambled in his own head, nearly dropping his comm device in the frantic need to get out of this particular portion of the conversation. "I just...what do you think I should do?" He drags his fingers through his hair, and watches Taeyong's expression through the screen, waits for something, anything to help make this easier to bear.

Much to his dismay, Taeyong shrugs. "I think you know what the right thing to do is, Lucas. You always have." And he cracks that enigmatic smile of his, the one that means both everything and nothing at all, and Lucas wants to reach through their call and rip every hair out of his friend's head. Just for a second.

Ten, however, in a surprise move, takes the device from between Taeyong's hands, and Lucas does his best not to shrink away from a screenful of the only person who's ever kind of scared him. "You have to get that man out of there," he says, in the most deadpan voice. "No one deserves to suffer like that."

And true, Lucas had come to that conclusion independent of Ten's advice, or Taeyong's, for that matter, but he chews at his bottom lip over it anyway. "I just...it's my job. You know?"

Ten just sort of rolls his eyes, offers the comm back to Taeyong, but there's a hint of a smile tugging at his mouth, like he thinks Lucas is dumb. Maybe he is. "Yeah, but is your job more important than the treatment of people?" Taeyong asks once he's stable again, no longer a mess of pixels on a screen trying to form a human face. "Because the Lucas I went to school with would probably not think so at all."

It's nice, he thinks, a bit bitterly, to be known by people. To be cared about enough to be read that deeply in just a few short words. They exchange a little more, Lucas craning to see Ten's reaction to any of this, like his judgment matters.

Right before the call ends, he takes it back from his boyfriend. "Listen." And at least he's dropped the deadpan. It makes Lucas feel more like trusting him. "I know you're scared of not having something you worked hard to have, but wouldn't you be more scared of not doing the right thing?"

Then the call disconnects. He's left alone with his thoughts. He starts scribbling a blueprint on a drawing screen, a map of the seg wing he's come up with from memory, the exact distance between where Jongin is kept and the pods that shuttle Lucas back and forth at the beginning and end of his shift.

It won't be easy, but Lucas knows exactly what he's got to do, and no one has ever said anything worth having would come easily.

He can feel judgment from eyes he doesn't see, and curls in on himself, sketches away in the silence.

///

It takes a week, all told, to get the plan rehearsed down to the very last squeak of his uniform shoes against the laminate flooring. Lucas attends to his shifts like nothing at all had happened, and though the picket guard watches him with suspicion, he's never asked to give back the key. A miracle, that. He thanks whatever stars are out there watching him do his duty, protecting him, protecting Jongin for their gracious mercy, words he probably wouldn't say aloud if he could help it.

He calls in a favour to his friend, the mechanic, who’d been kind enough to fix up his craft at a highly discounted rate. Credits are exchanged. His ship is truly his, now, in working order, ready whenever they are.

In the interim, he and Jongin talk. Really talk. Conversation on both sides, he discovers, is a wonderful thing, especially now that Jongin's lost some of the reservations he'd been showing off with boldness until just the other day. He laughs more, smiles a lot, touches in a way that lets Lucas know he's just as tactile as Lucas has been since they met.

It's been a month -- a short time for a man who takes a long time to fall into feelings -- but Lucas would be silly to deny the way his heart makes weird laser noises in his ears every time Jongin touches him. Maybe it's just the art of sudden reciprocation, but he wants more for Jongin, now that he's got a plan.

"What was it like, before?" Lucas asks, halfway through a shift. All his other duties are attended to, giving him all the time and focus in the world to give Jongin. It's what he deserves. "Before they had me working with you."

Jongin still trips over his words sometimes, speaks slowly, but his voice is something soft and gentle that makes Lucas want to crawl into it, curl up small, loved, cared for. The hesitation is just enough to remind him _why_ that might be a bad idea. "The nurses...they kept me medicated. They had me strapped to the bed all over, not just my wrists."

Lucas winces to think of Jongin, pressed into the bed with uncomfortable leather restraints, the ragged sound of his breathing as his lungs were gently compressed by medication that ran through his veins. "They didn't let me..." And again, he struggles for the word, for so long that Lucas thinks to quiet him, to hold a hand to the side of his neck, let him know he isn't alone.

"I can do things," he says at last. "Things that humans can't do. And since I got here, I haven't been able to do those things."

"What kind of things?" Lucas asks, aware of his own stare, eyes wide like satellite dishes, tracking movement in even the slightest degree.

"Moving," he says, but there must be something he doesn't like in Lucas' gaze, because he shakes his head, a frantic movement. "Not like that. Between places there isn't an in-between for." He reaches up, presses his hands to his chest, curls his thumbs in a strange shape Lucas can't identify. "Like... like you walking down the hallway, but the hallway is only for me?"

He thinks a moment, and then snaps to. His mother had always told him reading comic feeds would never help him, but then, his mother had been wrong about so many things. "You can teleport," he says after a pause, and it comes out a much graver whisper than he'd like, but Jongin's face lights up nonetheless. "You can teleport? But not here."

"No," and the light dims just as quick as it'd come. "But maybe...maybe if I weren't in one of these stupid rooms..."

Lucas bites his lip, and then says, so quietly he can't be sure he speaks at all: "I have a plan to get you out of here, if you want to do it." And true, this new information undoes some of the work, but he's getting better at thinking on his feet. The positive side of working, he figures, taking Jongin’s hand into his, gently dragging fingertips over his knuckles, soothing him as he explains what he means to do.

At the end of it all, Jongin nods, serious as ever, the twinkle that Lucas has managed to light in his starry eyes dying only to be replaced by something that burns, low, determined. Lucas, for one, has admired him this entire time, but it's more, now, and it aches in the place where his heart probably is, thrums in his skin.

"Whatever you say," is Jongin's final reply. "I'll get us out of the way if you can get me out of here."

A day passes. Another. Lucas must look fairly suspect, because it feels almost as if he's being watched more and more these days, his superiors checking in on his progress. "The prisoner's ward is going to be here any day now," says the warden, glaring sharply at him over the horned rim of her glasses. "I hope you've done a good job taking care of him."

For what it's worth, so does Lucas.

He just flashes her a brilliant grin, that goofy one that makes people seem to think him incapable. "Yes, ma'am," he says, offering a two-fingered salute, "I've done everything that's been asked of me."

The fact that someone is coming to get Jongin at any given moment sets his nerves on edge, but he's too pleased over his own efforts to make a plan instead of letting things come to him in the moment that he bounces with the idea of seeing his prisoner -- no, his _person_ \-- again. That, too, must be noticeable, because Mark flags him down, same as every time they're on shift together, but with something like concern knitting together his young brow. It's funny. Lucas tries not to laugh, but he looks like a tiny old man when he worries. Doesn't suit him in the slightest.

"You okay?" Mark asks in a hushed voice, guiding them down the hall toward their launchpad, the one place at which their sort-of friendship has converged over the past four weeks.

Lucas beams, a grin that stretches ear-to-ear, and Mark's worry only intensifies. "This, um, this might be the last day you see me."

For a moment, Mark manages to look stunned. "Are you going to quit?"

"No," sings Lucas, a pretty counter to the footsteps they're making toward their destination, slow and steady and in no hurry to get started with their work.

"Are you getting a promotion?" As ever, it's Mark who swipes them into the pod dock.

"No." Lucas crosses the room quickly, eager to get this part over with, do the right thing. Taeyong's reminder of who he is, what he does, rings true in his ears, in his heart.

"So you..." Mark slowly puzzles this out, each individual component running over his face, and then his eyes go huge, scared. "Are you going to do something stupid and get yourself fired?" he asks, in barely more than a mumble, his pod coming to life with its technological song.

"Maybe!" Lucas has never been this thrilled, not even during his days at the academy. "We'll see, I guess."

Mark glances around, makes sure no one's entered the room behind them. Impossible, supposes Lucas. They're the only ones who get on this shift at this time. "Is it about...The Prisoner?" And perhaps Mark is a better friend than Lucas had given him credit for. It's a tragedy they probably won't be able to see one another after this.

Lucas, chewing the inside of his cheek, just half-nods, not wanting to give away too much. The station, after all, was constantly watching them. "Wish me luck?"

Mark shrugs. "Yeah, I mean, if you're this happy about it..." He looks over his shoulder again, and he resembles some animated character the likes of which Lucas would have watched on feed as a kid. "I don't know. You didn't seem happy before you started working seg. If this is what does it for you, then more power to you." He shifts awkwardly from foot to foot. "Give me your comm."

Lucas does as he's told, expecting some comm channel to do with porn, still a bit shaken by that conversation despite it happening all that time ago. But no, it's a set of coordinates. Lucas searches them; it's a tiny dust planet, its only feature a diner run by robots.

"In case either of you two need a snack or something," he says, and there's something knowing in his tone that makes Lucas regret not talking to him more, or not getting to spend time with him outside work. He's a cool dude. "I might go check on you sometime." Asked and answered.

Lucas smiles again, and watches as Mark climbs into his pod. Before it clicks shut, he tells his coworker, "It was nice to meet you, and if things go really crazy, get out before anyone tries to hurt you."

Mark laughs, turns to look over his shoulder at Lucas, and his smile is something to behold. Not in the heart-skipping way to which Lucas is currently accustomed, but still -- for a prison guard, he's pretty goddamn happy. "Who'd hurt me?" he asks, in this innocent tone that lets Lucas know way too many things. "I'm just here, you know?" He thinks a second, right before takeoff, and says, "Good luck."

For what it's worth, Lucas knows he'll need it.

Once he's safely docked at his destination, Lucas exits his pod, stretches his legs on the way. He doesn't bother with the basics, today, something tugging at his heart to let him know what and where he should be. He makes his way to Jongin's cell. He slips the old-fashioned key into the lock. Turns it. Waits.

A little sigh bubbles up in him, relieving him of his tension.

"Lucas?" asks a quiet voice, and the door swings open in answer. Jongin lays on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. His hands are to his chest, a different configuration of fingers than had been shown Lucas before. "Is that you?"

"It's me," he confirms, grinning, standing over Jongin, ready to offer a hand. "Are you ready?"

Jongin sits up, and there's fingerprints around his throat, something ghastly in his eyes. _No,_ thinks Lucas, _no, that can't be right._ He scrambles, puts himself at Jongin's side, tripping over himself in the process and banging his knee on the floor beneath himself. "Are you alright?" he asks, a frantic note to his voice, reaching out and taking Jongin by the wrist. "What happened?"

"The nurses," says Jongin, with a sadness that explains everything. In spite of what he appears to be going through right now, there’s a sharpness around his edges that Lucas has never seen before, probably due to the lack of drugs. "They got angry with me for not wanting to take my medicine."

_That doesn't make sense,_ Lucas wants to say, but they don't have time for this and, truth be told, he’s fascinated by the knife hiding behind the beauty of Jongin’s eyes, ready to stab out if need. "If I tell you where a planet is, can you take us to it? Or, um, a ship?"

Jongin shrugs, peers up at Lucas, squinting against the bright light that had shone in his eyes a moment before, the way it silhouettes Lucas from behind. "Maybe. If I'm out of here. If you have coordinates."

Lucas can't keep his eyes from tracing the marks at Jongin's throat, wonders what malfunction had been purposely introduced to the system to keep Jongin where he was supposed to be, in their estimation. It doesn't matter right. He doesn't have time for this. Jongin's freedom depends on him.

They lace hands, Jongin peering up at Lucas like he's something worth beholding, and that makes all the difference. Lucas helps Jongin to his feet, spotting him for unsteadiness. They make their way out of the cell, slowly at first, not wanting to catch too much attention. The bots, the walls, they track movement -- something he learned from studying blueprints during work hours, something he thought was best not to do but did anyway just to be as _sure_ as he possibly could -- and Lucas would prefer not to attract their attention for as long as he can.

As they trace the path Lucas has drawn them, Jongin asks in the smallest, softest voice, "What do you want to do with me, when I'm out of here?"

"What do you mean?" Lucas rounds a corner, Jongin in tow, arm extended for them to keep hold of one another.

"I mean... I don't know. I'm not good at being kept places, in case you couldn't tell." Jongin says it with a dry, hollow sort of laugh, his fingertips pressed into the soft skin of Lucas’ wrist, digging past the stiff fabric of his uniform sleeves to find the meat beneath. “I just...what do you want?”

And Lucas hasn’t thought much of this, to be honest; he’d been so concerned with doing the right thing, with helping a wild thing escape its cage that it might be free, that he hadn't had the time or space to consider what he wants, what benefit he gets from this. But Jongin's eyes are filled with life now, devoid of the despair they'd contained not but one shift ago, and Lucas can't imagine wanting much of anything else.

He slips his hand into Jongin's, wriggling out of the death grip sure to bruise his wrist to do so, and their fingers interlace. They give one another determined looks as they finally break the path set out for them with lines on the floor.

"I want to be with you," grits out Lucas, as they're crossing an enormous chasm meant for prisoner recreation, for those fortunate enough not to be segregated from anyone else. It's still a long walk to their escape, and the walls are starting to light up, a threatening shade of crimson that sets Lucas to shivering. "That's all I want."

Jongin smiles, so bright it's worth dying for, and Lucas can't help but flutter, even as they're on their pre-made path, as carefully mapped as the veins that stick out on the back of Jongin’s hand. He traces those when doubt grips him, brief and uncharacteristic moments that disappear when he feels Jongin’s eyes on the side of his face, watching him for confidence, for reassurance.

At one point in that enormous yawning maw of the prison’s heart, Jongin catches on one of the tables that line the middle of the room. He stumbles, nearly collapses, the only thing keeping him sort of upright the grip he's got on Lucas' hand in his. Lucas struggles to keep him steady, only to go down with him. It is then that the whirring grows louder, that the walls open up, revealing their churning innards at last.

A full line of bots start to move in, menacing with their unseeing eyes, their extended arms, needles in each of their hands. Jongin makes a sound of distress, somewhere between a scream and a whimper, and Lucas would fight before letting him be sedated again.

He clambers to his feet, and his academy training kicks in, and he fights off as many as he can, a swinging, swirling giant in a sea of constructedly lithe bodies. Fists and feet fly, and Lucas, fueled by the need simply to _protect_ , is pleased to see how quickly they all come apart. One goes down with a swift kick in the chest. Another crumples as he punches its cybernetic head off, its circuits making this unholy crackling noise that sets Lucas to shuddering. These bots aren't trained to fight, they're trained to take care of medical cases; it doesn't surprise him that they don't go toe-to-toe with him so much as how simple it is to take them down.

When the room clears, the walls still make that haunted sound, letting them know they are watched. "There's more coming," Lucas says, chest heaving with exertion. There are far more bodies in this room than he had anticipated. He glances over his shoulder, where he'd left Jongin on the ground, but to his surprise Jongin isn't there. He is, in fact, beside Lucas, breathing heavy, and Lucas can't say he's been truly attracted to Jongin before now, but this -- Jongin's eyes alight with the same rush of the fight that Lucas is feeling right now -- is something to which he could adjust.

He wants to take Jongin's head in his hands, tangle fingers in his hair and... 

but there's no time. The efficient patter of feet from the walls behind them lets him know there are more bots coming. He takes Jongin's hand again, and by now they've learned to run, not walk.

The urgent honking of the system grows even more frantic, and the prisoners in their cells are giving their outcry, watching with their faces pressed to the bars, gripping tight at their cages and shouting their encouragement, their curses, their wicked epithets big and small. Lucas, in spite of himself and everything he's been taught the last month, breaks into a wild grin. These people are more like the ones he’d spend time with than the ones he’s been pretending to make friends with all this time.

He leads the way into a side staircase, and when the door clatters shut behind them they take a moment to catch their breath. Jongin leans against Lucas, heaving with the effort it takes to breath. He looks up at Lucas with those enormous eyes of his, still full of a life the likes of which Lucas has never imagined.

Then they’re off again, taking the descent two stairs at a time.

At the entrance to the pod dock, Lucas is forced to swipe his badge in order to allow them access to the pod room. There, waiting for him, is the warden, looking stern and laser rifle drawn. She trains it not on Lucas, but on Jongin just behind him, and Lucas steps in front of Jongin without even thinking about it.

"Get out of the way," the warden orders, and it's almost funny, the way she looks so small, dwarfed by her enormous gun. "I mean it, Wong. I don't know what this bastard told you to get you to do this for him--"

And here, Lucas laughs, long and loud, head thrown back and tongue catching in his throat. He’s caught up in his mirth, chokes, coughs. Anticlimactic. Not that he sees this for what it is. "He told me what you did to him," he says, still catching his breath, voice low with the effort of merely standing here, with being in this space.

"I'll shoot you," states the warden, even and terrifying, but her voice quavers at the very end. "I'll shoot! Do you want to die for this?"

Lucas stills, just a second, but then nods, firm, grave. "Do it or let us go."

She glances between them, Jongin and Lucas, Lucas and Jongin, and pulls the trigger. Lucas, for one, knows in the moment of life he has left that he has failed, and his one concern is that Jongin will make it out of this alright.

But the impact never comes.

Jongin, instead, has zipped across the room -- no, _teleported_ \-- and has the warden in a chokehold. Lucas calls Jongin's name, all affection and fear mingled together, unable to truly fathom that which has happened.

Then the warden drops, limp, seemingly lifeless, from Jongin’s arms. Lucas cries out, shock waving through him, the last thing he feels before everything becomes too much and he finds himself numb. “Is...is she dead?” he asks, taking a shaking step forward.

Jongin flashes, that light in his eyes brighter than ever before, gold and glimmering. “She’ll wake up soon,” he says, grave despite his lightness. “We have to go. Where are we going?”

“You did… you did that thing,” Lucas tries again, piecing together something that might resemble a sentence were he not so apt to talkativeness. “You did it. You can do it.”

“I’m here,” Jongin agrees, and reaches out his hand. Beneath his feet the warden stirs, and there’s a crack in the lens of her glasses, but the sound that ekes from her barely parted lips lets Lucas know she is, in fact, still alive. “I’m here. We have to go. They’re coming.”

Indeed, the klaxons, buzzing insect-like in the walls, have grown louder, more dire, and Lucas knows their time is almost out. He stammers out the coordinates he’d memorised not but a little while before, given to him by the only person on this complex he can consider a friend.

Mark.

Lucas doesn’t have time to fill with regret right now. He steps into outstretched arms, which Jongin fits around him, and watches as those fingers configure into elegant shapes.

Then they’re gone. There is no strange pulling sensation, no knowledge of his own rearrangement. It is a blink of an eye, and they are gone. Lucas is not stupid; he knows that these things are danger, that something could go wrong, but it’s difficult not to be impressed when one moment he’s in his place of work, and in the next he’s on a desert planet, bereft of any sign of colonisation except for a lone diner standing high against the howling desert contained within this atmosphere.

Jongin, he knows, is a wonder. There has never been any doubt about this for him.

He wants to celebrate, wants to do something to quell the outrageous racing of his heart, but he is not stupid, knows that this is not the time or place, not when they could still be stranded.

Still, Jongin’s hand slips into his, and he feels… right.

They cross the brief expanse of desert between their landing zone and the diner, stark against the brightness of multiple small suns that hang in the sky, rotating one after the other.

///

In time, the craft is delivered, Lucas’ close friend showing up and handing over the keys at the precise moment during which Lucas truly tires of diner food made by precise robot hands. He hugs his friend goodbye, amidst confusion and a bit of bleary-eyedness, and with his work complete, Jongin and Lucas sail amongst the stars. Jongin maps all their flight plans, grins when Lucas asks where they are going, keeping the punchline of the joke to himself.

He is free, and he is beautiful for being so, and beautiful still when he traps himself between Lucas’ outstretched arms, drinking in the comfort of having another person close to him. Lucas, for what it's worth, lets him take all the comfort he wants. It's what he deserves, after everything he's been through.

From jump, Lucas reminds Jongin that he is not kept, that should they decide to part ways, “it’s no hard feelings,” at least not from him.

Still, while they remain in the singular system in which they’d met, Lucas finds that hard for himself to believe. He catches himself staring, and can’t reconcile the feeling of keeping someone in place with the feeling of wanting someone close to himself. It feels...selfish. The wrong thing to do. Like he's asked for too much already and doesn't have the strength in himself to continue to ask for more.

Stupid. Jongin can ask for whatever he wants, has resorted to gestures rather than words, and Lucas never refuses him a single thing.

They spend the ends of their cycles tangled up together, barely fitting into the one-man control room for the craft. Jongin makes no show of his flirtatiousness, and it’s almost as if he’s a different person from the man Lucas met back there at The Colony. He's softer, now, as the bruises have healed and the marks on his throat have faded away. His voice is a bit different, raspier, with more edge, but he still startles from his sleep more often than not, a familiar cry on his lips that Lucas gently hushes him through with hands on his face.

It's during one of these times that Jongin asks whether or not he's allowed to kiss Lucas, and Lucas... well, he's not as stupid as one might think. Then they're all tangled hands, kissing with each pass beside one another in the cramped compartments of the craft they share. Like habits. Like it's something they'll do forever.

They visit Taeyong, and end up canoodling on the couch, legs entwined, more than they do with Lucas' friends. In his defense, Jongin is about as nerve-wracked by Ten as a concept as Lucas is, and comes away with a frightened admiration in his eyes every time they speak. But still, Taeyong, being Taeyong, flashes Lucas that smile, gets him alone in the kitchen just after dinner.

"He's good for you," says Taeyong, wrist-deep in dishes he prefers to clean by hand.

"Yeah," Lucas agrees, grinning as he leans against the counter. "Yeah, maybe he is."

Still, when the nights of long travel without a plan come, when Lucas can't sleep for fear that his inability to take action when it truly matters, he has his doubts that he's doing the best thing for Jongin by keeping him here.

It's only after they've moved three systems over that he gets his answer. He wakes, fitful, fretful, dragging his fingers through his bed-tousled hair, to find that Jongin is landing the ship all on his own. Lucas doesn't remember teaching him, but the autopilot is most certainly off, and there's Jongin at the controls, doing a very careful job of setting them down on the surface of some planet the likes of which Lucas does not know.

He greets Jongin with a kiss -- a prayer, by now, that he'll stay -- and plunks down on his thigh, ignoring the feigned groaning Jongin offers him in return. "Where are we?" he asks, groggy, a sharp contrast to the bright and wild stare of the man pinned beneath him.

Jongin slings his arms around Lucas' neck, kisses along the line of his jaw. "I'm home," he says, so soft and so significant that Lucas' heart stutters loudly in his chest. "I'm home. I wanted to show you."

And in this moment, Lucas knows that his prayers have been answered.

**Author's Note:**

> as always:  
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/appiarian)  
> [curiouscat](http://curiouscat.me/chahakyeon)


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